Street Ladies

Artist Katy Grannan has a keen eye for the pretty that exists in the odd. Her work is a body of mostly photographs that shows viewers what they may not think to look at in a way that makes it so they can't stop staring. The artist's latest work centers around a decidedly older group of subjects. In a two part solo exhibition entitled The Happily Ever After at Salon 94's Bowery and Freemans locations (see the site for details) Grannan presents The Believers and Boulevard. The Believers is an unscripted video work featuring a cast of faces familiar to Grannan's cannon; and Boulevard is the artist's rendition of street style photography. In her characteristic way Grannan stopped and snapped an intriguing (beautiful, unsettling, maybe unhinged) set of strangers against a stucco wall, as bright as the California sun.

The photos of Boulevard are of a varied set of passersby that present with their own peculiarities. Each subject carries out some form of visual delusion, whether a dyed mustache masking grays, a teeny tank top defying calendar age, a masculine jawline, or a host of ill-fitting clothing relaying an ill-fitting persona. The thread between them is a molding of reality to match the mind's life, the one that the subjects are living happily ever after. The photos themselves are saturated with sunshine, and glisten with brightness. The shots of older women, in their outfits and with their smiles, are most intriguing. Age is such a taboo in our culture, that we associate it with demented minds and feeble bodies, rather than a mark of life well lived and well spent. Grannan's photos raise that point without any pointedness, just great sitters and a stucco wall.

More Scene, Less Scenesters.

The Face Hunter, better known to his Mama as Yvan Rodic, has started an eponymous sister site to his scenester sighting web mecca. The new(ish) platform is a showcase of large photos sans ads, or anything really besides a dutiful reporting of the date, place, and perhaps the event being photographed. It's a treasure trove of visual mementos from Rodic's treks as a leading fashion eye. The site features more scene photos than straight on shots of the outfits of hipper-than-you, pretty-as-hell boys and girls. The effect is a stream of dream-like images, a keyed-in tour of places and the people and things that inhabit them. Rodic's signature vanishing points are still there, but so are close ups of faces and peopleless cityscapes.

Don't you feel like you've been somewhere?

A warning: Rodic's site transmits a lot of data and I've experienced that it can be slow to load, but it's worth the wait.

Charleston Street Style

Here's a taste of the style on the streets in my vacation destination, Charleston, SC:

Relaxed, geeky chic, minimal monochrome. Lookin' good, Charleston; lookin' good.

Photos from CharlestonMag.com.

It's My Vice.

WARNING: F-bombs are dropping in this post.

I'm about to let you in on one of my guiltiest of guilty pleasures. It's like this: There are at war within me two equal and opposite forces. One is a sophisticated, design-minded fanatic of fashion with what I can mildly assert to be discernible taste based on a passionate and educated sartorial awareness. The other? Well, it's a 15-year old boy who just shot soda out of his nose while laughing at his best friend who epically failed to reenact that scene from Jackass where they roll billiard balls at similarly shaped sensitive anatomical parts. For the latter force, I blame my father. He thought that because his kids were in the backseat they couldn't hear The Howard Stern Show blaring out of the speakers of our Mazda four-door. I've spent years trying not to laugh at the baser things that predictably tickle my funny bone, thinking I should be above the oh-so-politically incorrect wickedness of the lowbrow. But, ya know what? Screw political correctness! Humor done well is a talent, a golden-bowed gift! I think I still have discernible taste, even when it comes to bathroom jokes. I can sniff out the sub-par and I am not above saluting the truly comical, no matter what the subject matter. Why am I telling you all of this? Well, because the fashionista and the fifteen-year-old in me have a secret bonding ritual that I think you should know about. It is awfully, awfully, wrongly good. What is it? Well, it's the (all of the sudden I'm afraid you'll judge me...yeesh) Dos and Don'ts from--no, not the back pages of Glamour (also brilliant!)--VICE Magazine.

I know, I know they often go against any shred of decency that you would hope still exists in the world. They curse, they are filled with lewd, crude, rude, raunchy, sexually explicit gag-inducing visuals and captions. They are culturally insensitive, often sexist, and unabashedly arrogant. But, they are also...funny. Yep, I said it: I think they are funny. Well, not all of them; if they offend me I click the "next" button just a little quicker and move on. But, man when they get it right, they get it so right.

This appraisal of platform flip-flop wearers could not be more accurate; they are a quite predictable sign of greater problems.

You see styley fashion street sites all over, but I love witnessing what the gen pop is really wearing. The Dos and Don'ts what the folks on the street really try and get away with. The thing I like most is that when someone nails the style, they get the props. When they fail? They get torn something new.

Again, these Dos and Don'ts are not for the faint of heart or the humanely sensitive--there are both body parts and bodily fluids on regular display-- but if your inner man child and your innate fashionista need to spend some QT together, sit them down in front of VICE and let 'em at it. They'll play nice as long and your conscience doesn't come home and spoil the party.

Um...do you still love me?

Twice As Nice.

I'm on a running mission to congratulate The Face Hunter every time he scores a double: A pretty face wearing a pretty face. This time I think I shall award some extra credit for the presence of boobs.



I want a tee with teets on it. Good things come in pairs! On a more sophisticated note, it's kind of amazing how the washy colors of the shirtdress match the sunset (or sunrise? Most hunters find their prey in the wee hours...) in the sky. Nice work, Hunter!

Required Reading.

I've written about the Jak and Jil Blog before, but this time I must insist that reading it is a prerequisite for any friend of fashion who is also a friend of mine. I love the site because the photos are large. When it comes to eye candy (and maybe a few other things in life) I'm a size queen. The simple black and white surroundings of the site let the photos do the poppin' and the photos are divine; like sent from God through founder Tommy Ton's lenses. His sense of style, color, and fab are unparalleled, even in a blogosphere crammed with typing/snapping fashion heads. Check his flow:

Do Mr. Ton the honor of checking out the photos in their large spalshy size on Jak and Jil. His work makes my fashion bone itch. That's a good thing.